Bill Smith's Photography

Finally gone through the last of my post ice storm shots from over the Christmas holidays. I'm amazed at what I got out of this roll. Camera: Olympus OM-1md, various Zuiko lenses. Film: Kodak Tri-X400, Xtol 1+1.

If you're looking for fancy title, you're out of luck my friend. Winter is a constant season. As I am writing this the CBC call in program Cross Country Check Up is playing in the background with the topic "Coping with winter, have we become weather wimps?"  I spent the first 12 years of my life in Montreal and cold winters were the norm. This past Monday night and into Tuesday it dropped to -40c with the windchill, I didn't go out out of common sense. I just know better, the cold doesn't last forever. I love winter just as much as Summer because the beauty in the landscapes. My only wish is we got more snow and a lot less freezing rain. Camera: Olympus OM-1md, Zuiko MC 50 f1.8 lens. Film: Kodak Tri-X400, Xtol 1+1.

The one byproduct of the great ice storm of 2013 is stunning winter photography. I enjoyed shooting between Christmas and New Years because while cold, a layer of snow over the ice covered the landscape up in Caledon Ontario. I go skiing at a private ski club in this neighbourhood and I take pictures on the drive up and on the way home, I never get tired of shooting the landscape up here and it's so close to the GTA.  What struck me was how white the landscape was, even more so then after a regular snowstorm. Hearing stories from the locals made me very thankful I was only without power for a day, west of Highway 10 the power was out for a week around Belfountain, Brimstone and Forks of the Credit Road. What left me in awe were the trees bent over from the weight of the ice which you see along Mississauga Rd. in the bottom photo. Camera: Olympus OM-1MD, Zuiko MC 50 f1.8 lens, Film: Kodak Tri-X 400, Xtol 1+1.

I love snow, then again I ski so of course I love snow and winter photography as well. Here's little photography tip on capturing snow well. Cameras are dumb technology, even a top of the line Nikon D4, why? When you meter a scene, the on board meter no matter if it's centre weighted like an old manual focus film camera or matrix metered like a top of the line DSLR will read snow as mid point grey under normal exposure, hence grey snow in black and white and blue snow if you're shooting in colour. To get around this, you deliberately over expose by a stop and a half. If you are shooting say film rated at 400 ISO you expose at 250. In case of shooting on a DSLR it's a different ballgame, when you meter you have to make sure you use the exposure compensation feature and set it a stop and half over, now you have a proper exposure, you will have white snow in your photographs. Camera: Olympus OM-1MD, Zuiko 28 f2.8 lens and MC 50 f1.8 lens. Film: Fuji Superia 400. ...